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‘Good Wife’ Watch: The End of the Affair

By Mike Hale December 5, 2011 1:01 amDecember 5, 2011 1:01 am

There had been some dread in the “Good Wife” community before Sunday night’s episode, “Parenting Made Easy” (otherwise known as the kidnap episode), but it turned out there was nothing to worry about. Grace’s temporary disappearance — a plot device to crystallize all the troubles in Alicia’s life, bringing together Alicia, Peter, Will, Kalinda and both of the children (only Jackie was absent, conspicuously) — was suspenseful but not overplayed; no sharks were jumped.

Oh, and Alicia and Will broke up. Whatever you thought of their somewhat tepid affair through the season’s first nine episodes, the ending of it was a pretty great hour of television.

Just about everything clicked — even Alicia’s opening premonition of Grace in danger was handled well — and there was an abundance of small, telling touches. Like the way Canning (Michael J. Fox), the opposing lawyer in the case of the week, reached up to touch Alicia’s shoulders while Grace was still missing, echoing — and in some sense negating — the unwanted shoulder massage at the heart of the case. Or the shot of Will settling into his chair after being dumped, sharing the frame with the baseball bats symbolizing his Peter Pan boyishness.

Robert and Michelle King’s talent for snappy but credible dialogue was also on display. When Alicia, apologizing to Grace for the chaos in their lives, said “There’s just too many distractions right now,” Grace snapped back, “Get rid of them!” — the line that inevitably led to Alicia’s dismissal of Will. Kalinda had good scenes with both Dana and Will, capped by her reply when Will asked what she thought of commitment: “I think it’s — something people do.” Alan Cumming’s reading of Eli Gold’s defensive riposte on how the firm’s other lawyers manage to stay busy – “Because they got gumption?” – was priceless.

And the capper: when Diane, thinking that it had been Will who broke up with Alicia, told him, “She’ll get over it.” Will smiled and replied, lightly, “She will,” but Josh Charles’s delivery ensured that we heard the unspoken “She will.”

Michael J. Fox was archly entertaining, as usual, as Canning, and Bill Camp was fun to watch as the touchy-feely professor who was probably in the right but slimy nonetheless. Tim Guinee made a welcome reappearance as Andrew Wiley, hired by the state’s attorney’s office to help out in the investigation of Will, which promises to pick up steam in the weeks ahead. And Anika Noni Rose seemed to have a better handle on the pomposities of Wendy Scott-Carr.

So where does Alicia go from here — back to Peter? Please speculate in the comments. Did you find it a little too perfect that for the second time in the series, Will waited too long to declare his intentions to Alicia? Were you bothered by the fact that the way in which Canning won the arbitration case — by stealing a damning document from Alicia’s bag — implied that Alicia knew all along that her client was lying? Will the Kings be tempted to keep the series going by having Alicia accept Canning’s offer to jump to his firm some day? Is it credible that Eli, not to mention Alicia, would not be aware of the investigation into Will at this late date? And finally, will the arrest of Kalinda next week be the overly dramatic turn of events that the disappearance of Grace wasn’t this week?

Correction: Dec. 5, 2011
An earlier version of this post, using information provided by CBS, misstated the writing credits for the episode “Parenting Made Easy.” The script was by the Kings but the story was not; it was by Courtney Kemp Agboh.